Because our flight to Santiago left Guayaquil at stupid o'clock, the hostel organised a 6am taxi for us, and a packed 'breakfast-to-go' which included a piece of fruit, a juice box, and some crackers. We managed to lock our water bottles' gel freeze bit in the kitchen and couldn't get to it before we left, so alas, in Ecuador it stays. Once at the airport, we flew through security and the border, nearly bought everything in sight in Duty Free, and then began th...

When Fede at the hostel told us that a 'Lizard Park' was quite close to the hostel, I knew that would be heading there. So that's where we went after breakfast. We couldn't find any iguanas, nor could we find the Hilton hotel where we had to buy a polo shirt it from 'Lonesome George & Co.' We ended up taking a $5 taxi to the hotel, found that the shop is no longer there and grumbled. We did explore that part of town though - a huge shopping centre, Mall del S...

After a week of croissants for breakfast, delightful feast of scrambled eggs/omelette and toast was a welcome change. We started the day by exploring the city downtown the Malecon. The Rio Guayas looked somewhat like chocolate milk, and not the nice drinking variety either. sleep with the modern art museum right next to Las Peñas. The museum had an incredible mix of art media forms, galleries from different artists and some antique/ancient rather stuff too. Ne...

All good things have to come to an end unfortunately and our 'holiday' from backpacking South America is one of those things. We figured that we could live by a bus, but no one thought to tell us that they stop running at 8am, so when we went to leave at 9am our only option left was a taxi ($18 instead of $2). Grumble. But we took the taxi to the channel, and took the ferry across the channel, and took the shuttle up to the airport, and we reluctantly left the i...

After hiring a couple of snorkels and fins in Puerto Ayora, we returned to Las Grietas to swim with some more fish. Unfortunately we had left it a tad late in the morning and there were already a large number of tour groups swimming (and teaching others how to swim in life jackets) making noise and scaring all of the wildlife away. So instead of leaving, we jumped in and swam to the other end of the canyon. We found that by climbing over the wall of rocks, there ...